Don’t let embarrassment about a data breach cost you even more

Nobody likes to be embarrassed. That goes for company executives. This fact of human nature helps explain why the breach-disclosure laws that have been adopted by many states can be leveraged by data thieves for even more profit than they could realize before.

Companies have always been reluctant to admit to data breaches. A lot of that reluctance can be attributed to simple embarrassment: We’ve been telling our customers that our security would keep their sensitive data safe, even when we knew that no security system is perfect.

This is true even for companies that you wouldn’t think were capable of being embarrassed. After all, companies whose business has been facilitating extramarital affairs and offering porn on demand have been breached. They undoubtedly would have welcomed the resulting publicity, except that the circumstances made it clear to their customers that their names were in danger of being made public.